the rail engineer • January 2014 Editor Grahame Taylor grahame.taylor@therailengineer.com
Production Editor Nigel Wordsworth nigel@rail-media.com
Production and design Adam O’Connor adam@rail-media.com
Engineering writers chris.parker@therailengineer.com
2014 - there’s plenty going on We’ve taken a leap of faith with our coverage of work that was carried out over the Christmas break. It’ll be no surprise to you that this magazine went to the printers just before Christmas and, of course, before the possessions were even taken. Yet we confidently announce successful completions. There’s a real element of ‘fingers crossed’ when we jump across the year divide!
clive.kessell@therailengineer.com collin.carr@therailengineer.com david.bickell@therailengineer.com david.shirres@therailengineer.com graeme.bickerdike@therailengineer.com jane.kenyon@therailengineer.com mungo.stacy@therailengineer.com peter.stanton@therailengineer.com simon.harvey@therailengineer.com steve.bissell@therailengineer.com stuart.marsh@therailengineer.com
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London - Birmingham. Is there anywhere else in the HS2 debate? From the popular press coverage you’d think that these are the only cities involved with other towns decaying away through the lack of a direct high speed connection. But as Andrew McNaughton, Technical Director of HS2 Ltd explains so clearly this month, it’s these very provincial towns that will benefit from the release of capacity on the WCML. Danish high speed? Well, in Danish terms the new railway from Copenhagen and Ringsted will be relatively high speed, but it will be conventional. Clive Kessell has looked at the project and considers the similarities and differences - between the UK experience of HS2. Capacity is a familiar argument, lengthy gestation periods occur in Denmark as well, but anti protests seem to be muted. I vividly remember the morning of 12 December 1988. I had just arrived at the Derby technical centre to meet some S&T colleagues when the news of the Clapham accident filtered through. The signalling department went into shock. Needless to say the meeting was cancelled. Twenty five years on, Clive Kessell reports on an IRSE conference that looked at the wide-ranging changes that have occurred within a department that believed it was safe. There are plenty of challenges ahead for the signalling community as Clive tells us in his account of the recent suppliers’ conference. But one of those will be to grapple with the abolition of the term ‘Signalling’ and its
replacement with ‘Command and Control’. Yes, Signalling will be no more. But maybe it will be abbreviated to either yet another acronym or back as one simple word - signalling. Has anyone told the IRC&CE yet I wonder? England is just about to lose a concrete sleeper factory. When you understand that there were only two to start with, then it’s a pretty significant event. Network Rail needed another one. Nigel Wordsworth has been to see the start of work on a new manufacturing facility in Doncaster. It’s a three party deal involving Network Rail, Trackwork and Moll from Germany which will soon be turning out 30,000 sleepers a month. Just north of Doncaster a new link line has been constructed over the ECML in order to take freight traffic off the main line. Graeme Bickerdike has been to see the project that is in its final stages and which is due to be commissioned in April at a cost of £44 million. Part of the construction plan was to bring in most of the fill material by rail, but the slip at Hatfield colliery put paid to that. Nigel has been finding out about signatures and the fact that, for plant certifications, there were but seven available in the whole industry. This was one of the less publicised railway skills shortages. Times are a-changing with Lloyd’s Register taking an interest and a lead in addressing the situation. David Shirres has tracked down Steve Yianni, late of Network Rail, but now chief executive of the newly-formed Transport Systems Catapult (TSC). It’s an intriguingly
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titled organisation, one of seven created by government in 2007. Rail forms just a part of its activities - which includes the coordination of all transport test facilities so that rail, road or marine, for example, are no longer considered in isolation. Work continues apace at Nottingham with the Grade II* listed porte-cochère and concourse of the original station being fully and sensitively refurbished. Chris Parker has been to see what has been going on and to hear about the hidden gems revealed above the old buffet where traditional craft skills have been used to restore delicate plasterwork. From Maidenhead in the west to Shenfield in the east and Abbey Wood in the south, Crossrail trains won’t always be in nice new tunnels. They’ll have to travel for part of their journeys on tracks owned by Network Rail. And that’s where Rob McIntosh comes in as Network Rail’s Crossrail programme director. He has the task of making sure that, when the tunnels are built, the trains can run complete services and not just stay underground. The pace of working is really cranking up and Crossrail will become much more visible - ironically on Network Rail infrastructure. Any proponent of sustainability may be a little disappointed that, within all the articles in this month’s edition of the Rail Engineer, we only mention sustainability a handful of times. It’s a large subject encompassing a multitude of facets and is seen by the industry as a key part of the tendering process. But, in our second article on the subject, we’ve redressed the balance and have used the word sustainability, or one of its derivatives, 63 times - so you’ll have got the message by the end.